Easter People

00:00
Eshinee Veith
He came to restore all things. He came to bring life to a place of death. He came to bring that resurrection life to us. 

00:17
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the essentially translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible translators. I’m rich Friedowski. 

00:22
Emily Wilson
And I’m Emily Wilson. 

00:24
Rich Rudowske
Today we are celebrating Easter, and if you’re receiving this podcast on Good Friday, you may wish to already get it started, since every day is an Easter for the Christian, or you might want to save it for holy Saturday or Easter Sunday. But we are gathering some stories from our folks in the field and talking about Easter around the world. Emily, tell us a little bit about what we got. 

00:46
Emily Wilson
So we do have some stories from the US, but also some stories from our african context and so really looking forward to sharing a little bit of perspective. But also you might be a little familiar with some stories and have flashbacks yourselves. 

01:03
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. Do you have any Easter memories you’d like to share with the audience? 

01:07
Emily Wilson
Yeah. Easter was a special time. It’s my sister’s favorite holiday. Our sanctuary always would have the hyacinth and the Easter lilies, but the senior youth group at our church growing up would have a pancake breakfast. So sunrise service was at 06:00 a.m. And after the sunrise service, everyone would be hungry at the smell of pancakes wafting from the heritage hall. And we would have been hard at work making those pancakes and being manned at the stations to humbly serve. But it was a lot of fun, if I’m being honest. It was mostly for us. 

01:48
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, one of my best Easter memories was the first Easter when I was a new pastor and were just really trying to up our audio visual game at the church. And so I was there late on Saturday night after the family had gone to bed. We lived right by the church, so it was easy for me to sneak over there and I went up in the balcony to do some work on the audiovisual stuff that we’d be using on Easter morning. And the sanctuary was all set up for Easter. All the flowers and the decoration changed, everything restored to the altar, the white pyramids and the smell of all the sweet smell of all the flowers and just this feeling of joy, like Christ is risen indeed. Just the quiet before the bursting of celebration. 

02:32
Emily Wilson
It was really awesome, it is true, going from all lent, very simple sorts of decorations and a lot of a remembrance of this is the weight of our sin that Jesus carried to the cross. But the joy that we can experience, like you said, every day as resurrection people at the joy of the empty tomb that Christ is risen indeed. 

02:59
Rich Rudowske
All right, we do want to warn our listeners that coming up will be a story about the Easter Bunny and a discovery that someone made about the Easter bunny. And if you have little kids listening with you and you’re not ready for them to make that discovery about the Easter bunny, we just want you to be advised that is coming up. 

03:16
Emily Wilson
So, one of our colleagues, Katie, had an especially skilled seamstress mom. And her outfit that she created for her daughter was certainly eye catching. And so we want to share that story of Katie growing up. 

03:41
Katie Hogan
So, as a kid, my family attended a very traditional Baptist church. I’m sure you know the kind that I’m talking about. You walk in each week, and you have your specific pew that you sit in no matter what. Yep, it was that kind of church. Well, my family was not back row Baptists. In fact, our pew was the third from the front. Easy for my mom to watch us kids from the choir loft or the piano man watch us. She did. Every year, my mom would make me a new Easter dress. I don’t remember ever shopping for a new dress. My mom always made it. And in typical southern Baptist fashion, she would make me a bonnet to go with it. 

04:16
Katie Hogan
I was always so excited to be able to sit in the back row on that one day each year, only because my bonnets were too large and my mom was afraid people couldn’t see around me. 

04:26
Emily Wilson
That’s adorable. 

04:28
Rich Rudowske
Yes. Easter bonnet is a great tradition. Probably loved by many, and maybe not loved by many, too. I don’t know. I’d never, as a boy, had to wear the bonnet. I think my parents tried the hats for the boys one year, and that was a one year thing. And they were like, you know what? 

04:44
Katie Hogan
This is just not working. 

04:45
Emily Wilson
Pitch it. The struggle. 

04:47
Rich Rudowske
All right? 

04:48
Emily Wilson
It’s not worth it. Those are precious memories. Like, were talking about the sanctuary being beautiful and joyous. But also fashion shifts from dark colors. And then Easter comes, and it’s all these bright colors and flowers and the prints, and just everything is pointing to new life. 

05:11
Rich Rudowske
So our next story is from our it coordinator, Sarah Stillwell, who I’m just going to throw out there, was too embarrassed to get on here and read it herself. So we pinch hit for her with our great colleague Alyssa, reading Sarah’s story about a discovery she made one Easter. 

05:31
Sarah Stillwell
I grew up in a traditional catholic family where every Sunday you put on your Sunday best. Every Sunday you always put on your pantyhose along with your dress. No matter how old you were or how cold it was I always slightly dreaded it? Except for Easter. Around every Easter, we would have a family outing of shopping for Easter outfits. The women in our family would receive a bright, new, colorful Easter dress, and my brother and dad would get a new suit. When I was about six years old, after the Easter service, my family and I attended the church’s Easter egg hunt. I remember this day like it was yesterday. I was so excited to see the Easter bunny as I was every year. Well, this particular Easter bunny just didn’t seem right. 

06:13
Sarah Stillwell
My dad was not with us at the Easter egg hunt, or so I thought. I kept asking my mom, where is dad? She brushed the question off and said he was running late, which I also thought was od because we took two cars to church that day, which we never did. In pure joy and excitement. I found the Easter bunny, run up to him, gave him a big hug, and then it happened. I looked down and saw my dad’s shoes. I yelled, you are not the Easter Bunny. This is my dad in there. My mom seemed slightly mortified for the other kids as I revealed who the Easter bunny was. This Easter story tends to always be brought up around Easter time when the family is together. 

06:55
Sarah Stillwell
We always laugh how my dad dressed up as the Easter bunny and how he was caught due to the fact that his feet coverings were too small to cover his tennis shoes. 

07:04
Emily Wilson
Oops. Poor Sarah. It’s not exactly what you’re expecting when you’re on an Easter egg hunt. 

07:13
Rich Rudowske
Yep. Yeah. I don’t know. I guess. Gotta make sure the costume fits. But it’s great that the family brings it up. It sounds like a know great memory. And those are some of the memories that are funny too. Are great too. When you get the family together and there’s a good laugh. It’s just one of the joyous things about holidays in general. And since Easter is about resurrection and new life and joy, it’s just great to have those kind of moments all fits together. 

07:39
Emily Wilson
And I suppose that’s true of the retelling holidays in general. We love forming memories and retelling them over and over. And there’s just something as human beings created in God’s image of telling the story. And as we’re looking at the Easter story as told in the gospels, there’s good news to share over and over. And Jim Lesh has a story here for us about the work in Grebo and how they translated. 

08:14
Rich Rudowske
All right, so we’ll take it away to Liberia. 

08:20
Katie Hogan
In Mark 16 six. The text tells us that the young man told the women, you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, he has risen. He is not here. And just that little phrase, he has risen is a passive construction, and it doesn’t really say who raised Jesus. And in the northern grabel language, if you just say he is risen, it means it really comes out. He got up, like getting up in the morning. So in northern Grabo, the Bible translation actually reads, God is the one who raised Jesus from the dead. He is not here. And that, too, is very good news. 

09:02
Rich Rudowske
The communication of the gospel is so important, and this is one of the things we discover over and over again in Bible translation, is the story being told and retold, as you mentioned, and with each successive language that the Bible is translated into. On one hand, the christian message is incarnational and inherently translational. From the beginning. You could even say essentially translatable, like we say around here. But on the other hand, every time a new language is encountered and a different worldview is encountered, it’s like turning the facet of a jewel just a little bit and getting a little different view of things. And so here, the way the Grabo language works, it helps to emphasize that the one that does this raising is God, and he’s vindicated Jesus and said that this is indeed enough. 

09:48
Rich Rudowske
What Jesus has done has paved the way for reconciliation between God and man. 

09:52
Emily Wilson
Right. I do appreciate that analogy of that. There is a new facet to discover and how important it is, too, for us. Why is it that Jesus was raised from the dead, God raised him from the dead of new life, and that power only comes from God? Yeah, absolutely. 

10:12
Rich Rudowske
So our good friend Chris Pluger, who’s a great storyteller, if you remember him from Christmas, he talked to us about Easter, and what he’s going to share here is the experience of Easter in rural Africa. And I think as many missionaries as I’ve talked to, and even my own experience living in a rural african setting, this is so similar. It’s astonishing how around the continent, this is kind of the way things work. So Chris did a great job of kind of describing what Easter looks like in the rural african christian Lutheran context. So we’re going to hear from Chris about his experience of Easter in Zambia. 

10:50
Chris Pluger
The way I normally start talking about this is to ask the hypothetical question of how your church celebrates Easter. Okay? So that’s the one thing that you kind of think of. And normally the way we think about that is that, well, sure, the congregation comes together on Easter morning, and maybe there’s a sunrise service, and then you definitely have to eat some breakfast. And then everybody has this big Easter festival service. And that’s super cool. And normally we take it for granted that our pastor is going to be there, which he is, and that’s nice because pastors are good. 

11:20
Chris Pluger
But how does that work in an african setting where the pastor, for example, our pastor now has five different congregations that he serves, five different preaching stations that are spread out between an hour and two hour trip to each one of them on his motorbike. So imagine like Petauquetown is like the hub of the wheel, and then the spokes are his trips out to these congregations. So what do you do? How do you celebrate Easter when you have five different congregations that are so spread out that you can’t possibly make it to all of them in one day? So the answer is, instead of the pastor going to the congregations, the congregation comes to the pastor. And so in Zambia, the zambian lutheran church, they have a tradition of what they call a camp meeting. 

12:07
Chris Pluger
And it really is just kind of like a camp out for Easter. It’s super cool. So the five different parishes, at some point probably the year before, they’ve actually picked who’s going to host the camp meeting next year. And so that congregation does all kinds of preparation. Normally it involves clearing some brush or cutting down a couple of trees to clear some space or making sure that there’s no ant hills or snake dens or whatever in the yard of the church. It involves laying in a lot of firewood or charcoal or whatever for cooking. So the host congregation does a lot of preparation. Sometimes they even put up a privacy fence, which kind of helps people feel a little more comfortable and at home. 

12:49
Chris Pluger
But then it also is a windbreak because Easter is kind of like the beginning of the really chilly season in Zambia. So the rains have stopped and it’s starting to cool off. It’s becoming winter, and then people feel very cold when they have to spend all night outside. So the host congregation does this preparation and the other churches come to that predetermined host congregation. And that normally means walking. Sometimes they hire a minibus or some kind of a pickup truck that they can all ride in or whatever, but that means walking. And that means walking with everything they need for about four or five days of camping. 

13:29
Chris Pluger
And so that means a big bag of mealy meal, maybe a couple of chickens, several children, washing powder or whatever, if they’re going to do some laundry, cooking pots, if they’re going to make all their enshima and stuff. So all these people are trekking through the bush to get to the congregation, and then they have this camp meeting. So everybody gathers, and I got to go. One year, it was super cool. And I want to say, people start arriving Wednesday night already of holy Week because it’s kind of a four day gig, right? Monday, Thursday, good Friday, then holy Saturday, and then Sunday morning is the big thing. 

14:07
Chris Pluger
So people start showing up probably Wednesday night, but more likely they’re coming Thursday, late morning, early afternoon, people are arriving, and they’re bringing their mats, their straw mats that they sleep on and all of their stuff, and they’re kind of setting up their little stations, and they’re greeting people that they haven’t seen for a whole year, because this is oftentimes the only time that all of the congregations of that one pastor, which they call a parish, are able to get together. So they’re greeting their old friends, and the people who are on parish leadership and stuff are doing their thing. And it’s just a super celebratory church gathering for the camp meeting. And the pastors love it because it’s all the birds with 1 st. And so Monday, Thursday, they can have a nice long service because nobody’s got anything else to do. 

14:54
Chris Pluger
And so they can preach about the Lord’s supper and do teaching on the Lord’s supper as long as they want to. And they can have breakout sessions on Thursday before church, and they can. Women over here and men over here and young people over there, and they can do parish leadership council stuff and women’s group stuff, and everybody’s together, and it’s something that you don’t want to miss. And then. So Friday, of course, same kind of deal you’ve got teaching all day, opportunities for fellowship. There’s usually a soccer match or something. And of course, the food. So everybody’s cooking all this food, and they’re really enjoying sharing their meals with others. 

15:32
Chris Pluger
And I don’t know if they take turns, and one parish cooks one day and one cooks the next, and everybody goes through, like, a classic midwestern church buffet or if it’s kind of every man for themselves, I couldn’t really tell. All I know is that I got a big plate of food every meal, and people were really excited to give me that. And of course, I was really excited to get it because I like food. And they would bust it out, too. It would be chicken and beans and in shima and vegetables, sometimes there’d even be, like, mandazi, like bun donut things in the morning. Madondo, they call them insenga. So, like a sweet roll kind of thing, and fantastic. 

16:10
Chris Pluger
I, of course, took my own coffee supplies, so I made sure I sneaked some hot water from the ladies so I could have coffee every morning. But otherwise, it was really fun just to hang out with people, listen to them talk, watch them tell stories, watch the kids play soccer, watch the ladies both cook and eat and wrangle their children. And then. So Thursday, Friday, Saturday is a little more of a free day. But again, it’s a time for meetings. It’s a time for Bible study, whatever. And then Sunday is Easter. And so Sunday morning, I went to sleep. Saturday night, I’m sleeping in my tent. Sunday morning, man, it’s like, early. It’s like before dawn, and I hear this singing. And, of course, Lutherans sing all the time. African Lutherans sing all the time. And there had been choir practices throughout the weekend. 

16:58
Chris Pluger
But, man, this was really cool, singing. So early Sunday morning, here’s this singing. And I hear this shuffling noise, like something scuffing along. And so I come out of my tent, and it’s all the women of the whole parish are marching through the camp meeting, around the church and through the sleeping areas and around the cooking fires. And if you want to think of a very dignified african conga line, that’s kind of the impression that I got. So people are doing this measured step, and they’re dancing along as they sing, and they’re singing this song. 

17:33
Chris Pluger
I figured out that what they were singing pretty much over and over was the verse from the gospels where early in the morning, before it was light, the women went to the tomb, and the women went to the tomb, and they went going, and they went dancing, and they went singing. And then they find that the stone has been rolled away and the tomb is empty. And so this was the women preaching the Easter gospel. Just at the very crack of dawn, as it was starting to get light, the women are reenacting this scene from scripture. 

18:02
Chris Pluger
And it was such a beautiful thing, just the joy in people’s hearts and the joy that they were able to reenact, to reparticipate in that, and to put themselves almost literally in the shoes of those women who went the very first Easter Sunday and found that the tomb was empty. And, of course, what do these Nsengo women find at the end of their journey? Around the camp and a couple of laps and out into the bush and through the village. And then they come back. What do they find? They find a pastor who’s ready to preach to them that the tomb is empty and that Jesus has risen, and that their hope is not in vain and that any loved ones that they’ve lost in that previous year or years before will rise again. 

18:44
Chris Pluger
Just like Mary and Martha were promised when their brother Lazarus died, that because Jesus lived, they will live, too. And their loved ones will all live, too. And that’s just a beautiful Easter gospel preached to me in a way that I will never forget, by a whole parish full of women marching around the village early in the morning while it was still dark. Here come these women going to the tomb. So that was a pretty cool thing. And then the Easter festival service lasts until almost noon, and then there’s one more meal, and then everybody kind of heads home and ready to do it next year. So that was Easter in Zambia, when you only have one pastor for every five churches. And I’m happy to be a part of that. 

19:25
Emily Wilson
Chris has quite the attention for detail, and I love that his life was so heavily impacted by these cultural events that are surrounded by the Easter story. And I’m not going to lie, I would love to be there. That just sounds so amazing. What a celebration. 

19:45
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And just the beautiful illustration of the women. And it is a part of the Easter story. All the gospels recorded, that is the women who first are out looking, the women who first hear the good news. And it’s one of the core features of Christianity, that it’s inclusiveness, it’s available to all through those who believe in Jesus. That’s an invitation open to everyone. And no one’s excluded by any of the things that people have used in the past to exclude, such as social class or race or gender or anything. 

20:18
Emily Wilson
Right. And I think that in that culture, in the Nsanga culture, like women going and being the first to deliver the news, that was tied in with the Nsanga New Testament dedication. Right. When the New Testament was dedicated, the first ones to bring the New Testament books to the people were the women delivering the good news. And so just that imagery is quite beautiful and really empowering. 

20:47
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And this idea of reenacting is a biblical idea. Maybe we don’t embody it as much in the west, but the retelling of these stories and the celebrations and really living it and embodying it is just part of how the majority of the world remembers and celebrates. And so it’s really well illustrated in what happens in that camp in Zambia and throughout camps throughout Africa on Easter. 

21:11
Emily Wilson
Right. I think that Ishni Weit’s next clip is similar in that sense of her perspective on Easter shifted as she served in Botswana among the Shigeyu people. And really, her perspective on not only Easter, but who we are as Easter people really shining through. But enough of me leading up, let’s hear it from Ishni. 

21:41
Eshinee Veith
So it’s difficult for me to say how Easter happens in Botswana, even though I lived there for ten years, from 2007 to 2017, because for the whole time that I was there, I was working with the Oye people in the Xie language Bible translation project. And every year at Easter for the week prior to, and then on Easter Sunday, they had their annual cultural festival where oye from all over Botswana and even Namibia would come together and they would celebrate their culture, and they would share news with one another, and they would have Xie language learning lessons and practice writing. There was a lot of translation of hymns that took place during that event, and it was just annual event where they would celebrate their language and their culture and their identity as waye people. 

22:38
Eshinee Veith
So, yeah, it was kind of interesting to be there as a part of a religious work and to not have that. Easter is such a huge part of our faith. I mean, what is Christianity without resurrection? So it was interesting to be there and to be with our brothers and sisters in Christ who were members of the know. It was, this festival was such an important part of the Oye people celebrating who God had created them to be. And so the cultural festival is a big part of helping to reclaim that heritage language for the Uye people, both now and for the future. And if you think about, know, Jesus didn’t say that. I came so that you might observe a particular series of holidays and attend church services on a prescribed set of days each year. He came to restore all things. 

23:37
Eshinee Veith
He came to bring life to a place of death. He came to resurrect. He came to be raised again from the dead and to bring that resurrection life to us, that we might have life and have it to the full. And so being a part of the Oye cultural festival every year, it was a great experience of resurrection that I got to be a part of, where I got to see the evidence of how God makes all things new and how God restores all things. 

24:10
Rich Rudowske
What is Christianity without resurrection? So key. 

24:16
Emily Wilson
Yeah, absolutely. And that he came, that we might have life and have it to the full. That’s just absolutely powerful imagery of it’s not just about attending church on Sunday, it’s not just about observing holy days, but to live a new life in him. 

24:35
Rich Rudowske
Right. And the restoration of all things. Another one of the most powerful Easter images for me that really gets me emotionally every year on Easter is the singing of the hymn Jesus Christ is risen today. Most of the churches I’ve ever attended begin the Easter service with that. And the way the organ swells and Jesus Christ is risen today. Hallelujah. But it’s know. And the reason why is know we’re celebrating, we’re remembering that again that day. But on the other hand, there is not a day that’s gone by since that first Easter day where that statement isn’t true for all of humanity. Jesus Christ is risen today, and that changes everything. And through the resurrection of Jesus, God says humanity can be made right with God. And the whole trajectory of the universe has changed. 

25:30
Rich Rudowske
And now, in some sense, we participate in the ongoing recreation of the world through living out our faith, being called to faith, being reconciled to God, walking in the forgiveness of sins, walking in his grace. And the Easter message is just pivotal, that the resurrection is the reason any of that happens. And without the resurrection, then there’s none of it, right? 

25:52
Emily Wilson
No, absolutely. There’s so much good news in all of that we don’t have to live in the past. But with our eyes focused on him, we can live in that newness and share that newness with our friends, our family, people that we haven’t met yet. Just knowing that God is working in and through and his salvation is for all people. 

26:16
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. And for everyone listening. If you’re having a joyous, wonderful time at this point in your life, praise God. If you’ve been struggling with whatever it may be, the last year has been a huge struggle. Just remembering that a year ago most of us couldn’t sit physically in churches to celebrate the resurrection and how devastating that was in one way. But maybe you’re struggling with any number of things and the message of resurrection, and what we hope that you remember is that the resurrection says that doesn’t have the last word and that God is renewing and working all things to himself. And that doesn’t make your struggle any less real, but it does mean that your hope can be found in Christ. And we just want you to remember that is the Easter message. 

26:59
Rich Rudowske
Nobody expected that they would come to that tomb on Easter Sunday and find a resurrected Christ. They thought it was over and they thought they were done. And I guess it’s just going to be like this. And we don’t know where our hope comes from and where have we invested our lives the last three years. And you may feel that way too. Sometimes. But resurrection says there’s a new story that doesn’t have the last word, and you put your hope and faith in. 

27:25
Emily Wilson
Christ and share it with others, right? I mean, that was the thing that the women from the tomb, on their way back, they immediately shared that good news. So your hope is in Christ, and then sharing that good news, that’s what resurrection is all about. 

27:42
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. So, Emily, it’s been great to spend this time reflecting on Easter with you, and we hope you listeners have been blessed by this time. We wish you God’s richest blessings. Happy Easter, and may the joy of the resurrection be yours. Thank you for listening to the essentially translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible translators. Look for past episodes of the podcast@lbt.org Slash podcast or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, audible, or wherever you get your podcast content. Follow Lutheran Bible translators social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Or go to lbt.org to find out how you can get involved in the Bible translation movement and put God’s word in their hands. The essentially translatable podcast is edited and produced by Andrew Olson and distributed by Sarah Lyons. Executive producer is Emily Wilson. Podcast artwork was designed by Caleb Broderwald. 

28:43
Rich Rudowske
Music written and performed by Rob Weit. I’m Rich Rudowski. So long for now.